


Icarus

by usuallyunusual



Category: The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Hurt Steve, M/M, Panic Attacks, Protective Tony Stark, So does Steve, and tony feels feelings, basically steve's a mess
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-06
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:53:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,246
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1733495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/usuallyunusual/pseuds/usuallyunusual
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aliens. It's always aliens. They have to come down and mess everything up, and bring feelings to the surface that everyone would rather keep buried. It's all the alien's fault, and if Steve never has to see another extraterrestrial being ever again, it'll still be too soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

The battle was raging around them, explosions making dust fly up and drowning out all other sounds. 

“This isn’t working!” Tony shouted, firing his repulsors.

“On your right.” Clint told him, looking down on them from his perch atop one of the tall buildings. Tony whirled around, firing to his right managing to knock down several of the aliens attacking them. He sent a sloppy salute Clint’s way in acknowledgement, before looking Steve’s way,

“Call it, Cap.” 

Steve surveyed the area, eyes flicking from one section of the battle to another,

“Let’s try coming at them from a different angle. An aerial attack? How’s it looking, Hawkeye?”

“All clear in the air, the fighting’s mostly on the ground. You should be good to go if you wanna take ‘em from the air.” 

“Alright. Thor, take Widow and find somewhere up high to get ready. Hulk, I assume you can take care of your own way up. Iron man, you got me. We’re taking this battle off the ground.”

At Steve’s command, everyone sprang into action. Steve watched as Thor swung his hammer in wide arcs, until he was airborne, disappearing with Natasha. Hulk was jumping, destroying patches of concrete whenever he slammed back down to the ground, until he finally gained enough momentum to latch himself onto the upper level of a nearby building. Steve sighed as pieces of the building rained down around him. 

"Ready, Cap?" Tony landed behind him and extended his metal clad arms towards him. Steve nodded, stepping up to him and holding tight. He exhaled loudly, rubbing a hand roughly over his face. When Tony looks down at him in question, he explains, "Aliens. Why does it always have to be aliens? Why can't it ever be larceny? Arson? Anything other than aliens."

Tony let out a quick, sharp laugh. Quick, but genuine, and the unexpected sound made Steve grin.

"Earth's mightiest heroes, Steve. We don't get paid the big bucks to stop burglaries."

"I'm pretty sure you're the only one who actually gets paid the big bucks." Steve mutters under his breath. 

He’s pretty sure that he hears Tony laugh again, but two genuine laughs in one day? One hour, no less. At his jokes? Impossible. He smiles nonetheless, and enjoys the comfortable silence they settle into. They’d come a long way, Steve thought, from when they first had met. It took a while. Several fights (both verbal and physical), lots of aggressive pranks, and one horrifying incident with a goat and a wig later, and here they are. Unfortunately, Steve’s not quite sure where “here” is. They’ve become friends, that much is apparent, but Tony still holds back from him. He holds back a bit too, if he’s honest with himself. However, there’s also the other side of their friendship. They’ve tiptoed on the line between friends and more-than-friends far too often to be considered normal (actually they probably stomped on the line a few times too many also). Steve looks up sees his team up ahead, stationed on the roof, occasionally jumping off to strike. He smiles and tells Tony to drop him, grabbing his shield off his back and jumping into the fray. The aerial strike works. For a while. Thor alternates between smashing aliens, swooping down to grab Natasha from the rooftop battle and move her to new fighting, useful fighting positions. Hulk...well. Hulk smashes. Tony and Steve use the combo moves they’ve been practicing in the gym to take down a large number of the aliens. Clint moves closer to the team to cover them, but far away that he can still watch their backs. It’s him who sees it before everyone else. Steve is taking down two of the larger aliens in this wave when he hears Clint’s voice frantic over the comms. 

“Watch out for their weapons, guys! They’ve got something on ‘em. I don’t know what it is, but I’m sure it’s nothing you want anywhere near you.”

“Alright team, be extra careful. We should only have to keep this up for a little longer anyway, it seems like we got most of them.” Steve told his team while turning around to throw his shield at one of the aliens. He spoke too soon. It happened simultaneously. Steve’s shield hitting the last few aliens standing around them and knocking them down, and a dark shadow appears over their heads. The shadow is from the large ship hovering above them, shining metal and glowing lights. The bottom of the ship opens slowly, sliding apart and remaining open. Everyone holds their breath, still crouched in fighting positions, various weapons raised, waiting. Fortunately, only three aliens come out of the ship this time. Unfortunately, they’re triple the size of the other aliens they fought. Then, just as quickly as the other fight ended, a new one had begun. This battle was even more grueling than the previous one. Thor stayed in the air, calling down lighting to try to fry them, and managed to take one down. Natasha and Hulk were batting one back and forth, while Clint was putting in all the arrows he had, even the fun ones (which he was very sad to lose. Do you even know how much a net arrow costs?). On the other end of the building, Steve and Tony were attempting to corral the second alien. The problem, it seemed, was that the aliens were fully rested, while the team was getting progressively more fatigued...and their moves were becoming progressively sloppier. One of the aliens had just hit the Hulk hard enough, and he went down, taking Natasha with him. 

“Thor!” Tony called up at the sky, racing towards Clint to help him stop the other alien, “Go check on them!”

Tony turned and fired his repulsors, eyes narrowed in concentration. Steve finally managed to take down the alien he and Tony had been fighting earlier with a well placed throw of his shield. He turned to help them take down the last alien, and froze in horror. The first alien they had taken down was standing a few feet behind Tony, charred from Thor’s lightning, but otherwise very much alive. He had his weapon raised behind his head and looked like he was about to charge. Steve didn’t think. He saw his teammate in trouble (Tony in trouble) and he sprinted. He ran right up to the alien, shoving into him and knocking him to the ground. They fought on the ground for a bit, before Steve felt a searing pain arch across his torso. He slammed his shield down one last time, and the alien below him was finally still. He collapsed back on his heels, grabbing his chest. 

“Steve!” Someone yelled from far away.

“He’s been hit.” Someone else said.

“Just...Just give me...a minute,” Steve ground out through his teeth, “It’ll heal soon.”

He wasn’t sure though. He hadn’t been in this much pain since before the serum. It was all encompassing, dark, bitter. Familiar. It was begging him to close his eyes.   
He could hear muffled voices continuing to talk above him, but unconsciousness was pulling him again, and he gave in and let himself be pulled into the quiet darkness.


	2. Chapter Two

Steve wakes up to see the blank white walls of the SHEILD medical facility. His vision is blurry, he feels like someone took Mjolnir to his head a couple times, but his torso is the worst. It feels like pure fire, starting in around his chest and spreading through his entire body. He looks around the room and sees his team (no, thats not right, he thinks. They’re more than just his team now...they’re his friends) in various positions. Thor was asleep, using Mjolnir as a pillow (he felt especially bad for any enemies they would face in the next week, because they would be hit with a hammer covered in Thor drool). Clint and Natasha were sitting back to back, and at first he was unsure if they were awake or not, because their eyes were open wide. Then Clint snorted lightly, and began snoring quietly, and Natasha’s head drooped slightly. Steve had no doubt that they could wake instantly if anyone so much as looked over at them too long. Bruce was leaning against the wall, eyes closed and breathing evenly (Steve always liked to see Bruce sleep, at team movie nights or times like these, because it was the only time the man looked completely at peace). He kept looking, seeing everyone except for Tony, and for a brief second he felt blind panic. The same panic he felt when he lost Bucky, the same panic he felt when he came out of the ice after 70 years. Did Tony get hurt in the battle? Did Steve not make it over to him in time? He felt short of breath, and and the pain in his chest doubled. He could hear a steady beeping growing louder, faster. Beep beep. His throat felt tight, like someone had their hand around it, and he was having trouble breathing. Beepbeep. His mind was blank. What year was it again? Bucky? No, thats not right. Why is he here? Is he dying? Where is Tony? Why can't he breathe? Beepbeepbeepbeep-"Steve!" He turned, and sitting to his right, angled slightly behind him, was Tony. Tony has his hands raised and moving awkwardly, flitting all around Steve but not actually touching him. On an impulse (a drug, injury induced impulse. That's why he did it. No other purpose. No sir) he reached out and caught Tony's fluttering fingertips, clutching them desperately. Tony doesn't pull away, to Steve's immense surprise, he just rubs his thumb over Steve's hand reassuringly, and murmurs gently to him.  
"Shhh, shhh. Breathe. I'm here, Steve, and you're right here with me. The rest of the team is right here, everyone's fine. You're fine. You're alright, just breathe."  
Slowly, Tony's words start to sink in, and he starts to breathe slowly and steadily. Finally, he beings to calm back down. Steve would usually be embarrassed, he would be absolutely mortified, but between the injury and all the drugs they're pumping into him, he can't find it in himself to be anything other than exhausted and grateful. His eyelids grow heavy and begin to droop of their own accord. When they close, he has a brief flash of panic again, his breathing picking up.  
"Steve, go to sleep. We'll all be here when you wake up, don't worry."  
He takes a deep breath and feels settled again, and this time when his eyes droop closed, they stick, and he falls asleep.  
______________________________________________________________________________

When Steve opens his eyes again, he’s standing in the middle of New York. Or, what used to be New York seems more accurate. Debris is falling from the sky like rain, and the sky a deep, unnatural, smoke black. Every few seconds he hears an explosion, quickly followed by screams. He panics for a second, before becoming confused. He doesn’t even remember how he got here. He tries to retrace his steps, going through the day, and the last thing he can remember is...white walls? Hospital! He was in medical. He looks down at his hands, to see that he suddenly has 6 fingers on each hand. While this fact would startle most people, it comforts Steve. He’s dreaming. It’s a trick he picked up from Clint when the Avengers first assembled, when he was having nightmares nearly every night, driving the plane into the ocean over and over again. In dreams you have extra fingers, you can’t read, among other things. Steve worked at it, and soon he would be able to sense when a dream situation was wrong, or didn’t make sense. He could take control of it, or, at the very least, he could force himself to realize that he was dreaming. This time, it was the latter. He knew it was a dream, but he couldn’t quite grasp the level of consciousness he needed in order to control it.  
“Excuse me, ma'am?” Steve asked one of his dream created civilians. She didn’t so much as glance at him, and that was new. Usually he could interact with his the different elements of his dream, even if he couldn’t control them. He closed his eyes and centered himself, trying to gain enough control to make conversation. To do control a dream, he needs to ground himself, to remember his life outside the dream, something concrete to focus on through his abstract dream. He takes a deep breath, and thinks of his team, his life. He focuses on what happened before he fell asleep, of the tower, and even of JARVIS. Finally, feeling slightly more lucid, he turns to another civilian, and attempts to ask his question again, when he sees the Iron Man suit crash down at his feet. He stares down in shock for a second, before noticing that the whole team was there, locked in a battle. he sees everyone but himself, which would normally be understandable, but considering that he was in his civilian clothing, he expected to see Captain America fighting (his subconscious tends to separate the two during his dreams).  
A small runs into him, falling to the ground. Steve helps him up, and asks, “What’s going on? Where’s Captain America?”  
The man looks lost for a second before saying quietly, “Captain America is dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading guys!


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